Brymo
Why singer appeared nude, wore 'G-String', showed his “butt” in his new ‘Heya’ video

I don’t want to see Brymo’s butt, separated by a G-String, but I did. I didn’t want to see Brymo walking around in all his full woke nudist glory, but I did. The last video I saw before sleeping last night was Brymo’s, and his butt was up in the air.

The critically acclaimed Nigerian singer was performing in the cinematic visual, shot by NVMB3R Production, and while there are a lot of positives to draw from the clip, there’s just that image of Brymo basking in his exhibitionist state that hits hard.

“I decided to appear how my forbears dressed before the arrival of civilization to Nubian continent,” Brymo says, in an email to Pulse.

(Instagram/Brymolawale)

He arrives on the shores of the Lagos Lagoon, with nothing but (judging from the Nigerian, hypocritical standards of conservative cultural boundaries), an inadequate loincloth, which simply keeps his frontals from our full glare. But the sun gave us his butt, and oh, Brymo was happy to flaunt it.

He walks to a piano, the camera capturing the best angles to properly inundate the video with all of that black alpha male butt. It’s quite the spectacle.

A post shared by Olofo'ro (@brymolawale) on Mar 27, 2018 at 12:19pm PDT

Sure, the song is about the dynamics of human relationships, and how shallow group-think has held back people from achieving their potential in life. It’s a moving call to stand up, take responsibility and turn our life around. It’s moving, moving from political, to romantic themes. Such a powerful record deserves nothing but a moving visual, and Brymo provides it with black male skin.

“I decided to appear how my forbears dressed before the arrival of civilization to Nubian continent,” Brymo says, in an email to Pulse. “We have all seen the costume in many movies, “Heya” was my own representation of that age; A bushman in the city, that’s my image of most black Africans of today. Although we reside in cities, we are still villagers in our thoughts and actions.”

The reaction is polarizing. On social media, the conversation has created a spectrum, with one end populated by the extremely artsy people appreciating it. In the middle lies the humor seekers, people who are spinning great jokes about the choice of clothing or lack of it in the visual. The final end of it comes with fire and brimstone. You find the purist Nigerians, screaming against his ‘immoral’ display of skin. They are raining abuses and think pieces about how art should be censored and all that.

“The reaction online is mixed, and many BrymO fans think it’s exactly what they wanted to see,” says Brymo. “For those who disagree with the image, I understand that they have forgotten how people dressed across the continent many centuries ago, or they couldn’t fit the costume to the story in the song... but what better way is there to tell the story of our disloyalty and disservice to each other, if not by bearing it all, butt and what not... lol.”

Brymo is an edgy artist, who approaches art from the eyes of a philosophical technician. He enjoys the process as much as the final product, tweaking, refining, and pushing the boundaries of whatever he touches. Follow his life story and the evolution of his art, and you will discover that every stage is marked with finesse and extreme attention to symbolism.

In 2014, when he screamed “Prick no get shoulder!”, off his “Tabula Rasa” album, a lot of people felt scandalous at the rawness of his truism. Sure, he spoke the truth; the human penis has a head, but no shoulder, and in contact with a vagina, it slides right through. Brymo used it as a figurative reminder for caution, and avoiding even the tip of anything negative in our lives. The use of that, instead of a less edgy image, have generated some conversation, which can be termed ‘hypocritical’.

“Hypocrisy is of human nature, and people everywhere are reluctant to embrace unconventional methods of doing things,” he says. “I think it is the Nigerian creatives who must understand that not everyone would readily embrace your truth or experiment. But persistence would drive more people to you, the longer you keep at what you do.”

“Heya” is off Brymo’s new album “OṢÓ" (The Wizard)”, which is available on all digital platforms.